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Chicken Breasts with Cilantro and Red Thai Curry Peanut Sauce

Chicken Breasts with Cilantro and Red Thai Curry Peanut Sauce is one of my favorite low-carb recipes with chicken, and this recipe is also low-glycemic, gluten-free, dairy-free, and South Beach Diet friendly! Use the Recipes-by-Diet-Type Index to find more recipes like this one.

When I featured Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk for Kalyn's Kitchen Picks, along with my recipe for Thai Chicken Soup, I promised another great recipe using coconut milk, and I loved these Chicken Breasts with Cilantro and Red Thai Curry Peanut Sauce. The recipe has a few key ingredients which are blended to make a creamy peanut/curry/ginger paste. When you heat the paste and mix with coconut milk and chopped cilantro, the result is a highly flavorful, fresh tasting sauce that really bumps up the flavor of whatever you serve it with.

The sauce was great on chicken, but I think you could also serve it on pork, fish, broccoli, or cauliflower. Any other ideas for using the extra sauce? Let me know in the comments.

I found the recipe in one of my newest cookbooks, Fine Cooking Annual. I got the book at Costco, but you can also follow that link and get it at Amazon.com. I totally love this book, no surprise since I love Fine Cooking Magazine. By my reading chair I have a package of brightly colored post-it notes that I stick on pages when I spot a recipe I want to try. The pages of this book are completely covered with post-its!

Trim the chicken breasts so they're all kind of the same shape, cutting off any visible fat or ragged pieces.

Then one at a time, put the chicken breast inside a heavy freezer bag and pound with a meat mallet until each piece is about 1/2 inch thick.

Mince the ginger and garlic, and measure out the peanut butter to make the paste. (Not shown, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sweetener, chicken stock.)

The recipe called for a food processor, but I used my immersion blender with the small canister attachment that was the perfect size to blend all the paste ingredients.

You'll also need a generous amount of finely chopped fresh cilantro.

Heat the oil, season chicken with pepper, and saute the chicken until it's browned and just cooked through.

Then remove chicken to a plate and cover with foil to keep it warm.

Reduce heat to low and add the coconut milk, scraping the pan to get off any browned bits. Stir in curry paste mixture and simmer until it's hot, about 2-3 minutes.

Stir in any juices that have accumulated on the plate and simmer another minute or so, then turn off the heat and stir in most of the chopped cilantro, saving a little to garnish if desired. Serve chicken with the sauce spooned over.

And just for fun, here's my original photo of this dish from back in 2007! Kind of orange, don't you think!

Trim chicken breasts so they are about the same size and remove any visible fat or ragged edges. Put each chicken breast inside plastic bag or between plastic wrap and use a meat mallet to pound to even 1/2 inch thickness.

Heat the oil in heavy, large frying pan. Season chicken with black pepper, then add chicken to pan and saute over medium heat about until chicken breasts are nicely browned and cooked through, about 4 minutes on first side, and 2-3 minutes more on second side. (It's important not to overcook the chicken; it should feel barely firm to the touch when you take it out of the pan.)

Remove chicken to plate and cover with foil. Reduce heat to low and add 1 cup coconut milk. (You can freeze the other 3/4 cup coconut milk for another time.) Scrape off browned bits from the bottom of the pan, then stir in peanut/curry/ginger paste mixture and heat through, about 2-3 minutes.

Add any juices that have accumulated on the pate and cook another minute or two. Turn off heat and mix in chopped cilantro. Serve the sauce immediately over chicken breasts, with additional chopped cilantro for garnish if desired.

Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
Made with an approved sweetener, natural peanut butter without added sugar, unseasoned rice vinegar, and lite coconut milk, this recipe would be approved for any phase of the South Beach Diet. Even if you used brown sugar and full-fat coconut milk, this would still be a pretty healthy low-carb dish and it should be approved for most low-carb eating plans.

If you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you. Or if you're a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.

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87 comments:

Kalyn, your recipe looks wonderful! I think I've seen the low-fat coconut milk at quite a few stores. It's a good idea for me, for some reason this milk will make me... burp, probably the fat content too high, but I adore its flavor though.

Kalyn, this is the best recipe ever. I love red curry and peanut butter, but never had them together before. I cannot wait to try, without cilantro ofcourse :) Thanks for sharing. I have a question : is it brown sugar or regular white sugar that the recipe asks for?

Anonymous, sorry about that. I guess when I get too harried I forget to tell the phase it works for! Yes, this is fine for phase one, except be careful not to buy "seasoned" rice vinegar, which has sugar. It's a great recipe. I loved it.

I rarely follow recipes to the T so either way this was delicious! All the flavors go so well with each other.

I am currently on South Beach phase 1 so as a suggestion, you can top the chicken & sauce with raw coleslaw (or just shred some cabbage). The raw cabbage with the sauce gives you the nice texture and crunch of a crispy noodle. Very appropriate for this dish!

Kalyn, I have just discovered your Blog and I love it! Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe. I have been following the South Beach Diet for a while now and whilst I am finding some recipes delicious, I hadn't, until last night, tried any of the recipes on my husband or children. I made this dish yesterday evening and the kids could not get enough of it! My husband did not have a chance to try it. One question though, do you have any nutritional stats for your recipes you post? I know this might be hard to work out! Thank you!

Kalyn, thanks for this recipe and all the others - I've lost 14 pounds on SB and I would be having trouble if it wasn't for your great site. We've changed this one up a bit to make it more like a regular curry. We cut the chicken into pieces, saute with peppers and onions, add the coconut milk and sauce, and throw in some mushrooms and the cilantro. You could serve it with brown rice but we don't miss it at all. Yummy, yummy, yummy!

Thelma, your English is not bad at all! I'm glad you're enjoying the recipes. Here's a recipe from the web for Red Thai Curry Paste which may help (although you may not be able to find all the ingredients.) You can probably come up with something close though. You could try googling for other recipes too to see if there is one that uses ingredients you can find.

Yummy looking recipe. This week I am going to do phase 1 and this looks like something I would definetly want to try. I just want to ask you about the coconut milk though. Is it really Phase 1? Isn't coconut a fruit? Please pardon my ignorance. Thank you!

Hi, this recipe is similar to one on the Food Network website from Sandra Lee. I had made that several times prior to starting SB, so I was THRILLED to know that I could still have it with a few modifications! To make it more similar to the dish that you might order in a Thai restaurant, I sauteed large slices of green cabbage in the pan after removing the chicken, cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and put them back into the pan with the cabbage and the curry sauce. I then served the whole dish over nicely steamed broccoli instead of rice. I think you could also add some strips of red bell pepper along with the cabbage for some nice color. Most restaurants also use carrots, but you can't have these on Phase 1 of SB. Also, for the benefit of your readers, red curry is NOT like Indian curry, so if you don't like Indian curry you might want to try this. You will be pleasantly surprised! Thanks for posting recipes, it makes Phase one of SB a no brainer!

I'm so going to become a regular poster on your blog! I hope my questions don't annoy you too much =). This recipe looks amazing and I can't wait to whip it up. My question is, once I'm done with phase 1, what would you suggest to serve this with?...and also speaking of SB Phase 1, when you first did it, how soon did you notice weight loss? I've been doing it religously for 7 days now the scale barely budged about 3 pounds...I'm beginning to get a little disheartened...any suggestions?

Any type of rice dish would be good with this; just enter rice into the search bar.

I first did phase one over 7 years ago, so I can't remember exactly but I think I lost about 8 or 9 pounds in two weeks. I'm not an expert on how the diet works for others though, the only thing I could suggest is to check the book to be sure you're sticking to it.

I've only been using phase 1recipes from the new book and recipes designated as "Phase 1" or "all phases" from your blog as well as allowed veggies and dips...my appetite has decreased significantly...maybe the weight is coming off slower because I don't have a huge amount of weight to lose (about 20 lbs.) ...I was just hoping you would have some insight based on your experience.

Kalyn this was really good! I am just starting SB again after doing it 6 years ago and falling (crashing) off the wagon. The big difference is the great recipes that I am seeing that weren't out there before. Yours are definitely more my style of food and I'm so glad you've posted them! Phase 1 will be much less painful because of you. Thanks! Jen

Coincidentally, I made a very similar recipe last night. Instead of vinegar, though, I used fish sauce, and added a bit of lime juice and a dash of Sriracha. I also use crunchy natural peanut butter instead of smooth. Love this dish!

I just made this for dinner and it was absolutely delicious! I've just graduated college and I cooked this for my mom (a very good cook) and she loved it too! Thanks so much, will be returning to your blog for more tasty meals!

This was a fantastic sauce that I can see myself making again and again. Thank you! One confession: I was feeling lazy, so I didn't pre-chop the garlic and ginger. I just threw it into my mini-food processor with everything else. Save a lone piece of ginger that wedged itself under the blade, everything chopped up nicely, and I was pleased with myself for saving a couple of minutes' work!

One of my favorite dishes, ever, is a dish called "Masaman Curry with Chicken" from a Thai restaurant near our house. It's pretty expensive though, so we don't have it often. I even requested it as my birthday dinner! I searched and searched the internet for any similar recipe, but never found anything remotely close. THIS IS IT! THIS IS Masaman Curry- I could not be more ecstatic to find one of my favorite things in a recipe I can easily make!!! At the restaurant, they serve this with the chicken in bite size pieces, cooked with chopped red peppers, and then garnished with avocado slices and cashews. And a side of rice. As soon as I took a bite, I ran to the pantry to get cashews and loved every bite! I'll be making this again super soon, and adding the avocado (sounds weird, but it works!) Thank you Kalyn!!!

Kalyn, I have enjoyed your blog and recipes for years, but I have to say that this is my favorite recipe so far. I love peanut sauce, and this was better than any sauce I have had in a restaurant. I don't know how you do it, but you come up with some of the most creative and delicious combinations of "legal" ingredients. Thank you so much for your dedication to healthy cooking, which in turn helps so many of us! YUM!

So yummy! Made this for dinner tonight! I cut the red curry paste to 1/4 tsp because we have a toddler eating it too. That was plenty of heat for us! He just said "yum. It good!" Very pad Thai like. I think I add crushed peanuts next time for some crunch. I had extra cooked angel hair so served it with that and some snap peas. This is a keeper! Super easy recipe too. Thanks for sharing!

I just had to stop by and tell you I made this dish tonight and it was OUTSTANDING! I just love any of the satay-type sauces and this one was stellar! Hubby really like this a lot! THANK YOU so much for this addition to my collection!

I want to make this for dinner tomorrow but im nervous. The sauce sounds amazing but i know theres different types of curry. The only curry ive ever liked is yellow curry from a thai place by home and its very sweet. Is red curry similair?

I'm not sure how to answer that. Red and Yellow curry are both Thai curries, so in that way they're similar, but each is slightly different. The red curry isn't sweet, but it's delicious. Maybe google Thai Red Curry Paste and Thai Yellow Curry Paste and compare the ingredients to help you decide.

Great recipe. I liked the sauce a lot. I like it spicy so I'd double the red curry paste. I ended up with much larger chicken breasts than your pictures, so i doubled the sauce. So happy I have some left over sauce and cooked shrimp. Lunch tomorrow!

I made this tonight for my 3 boys and made it exact from recipe. I want to let you know this tasted exactly like the ginger sauce at a hibachi grill and I could drink that stuff! But mixed with coconut milk made it silky and creamy and just divine! I'll figure something else to make for the leftover sauce for my meal prep!

I'm so happy you're taking the time to comment on Kalyn's Kitchen! I love hearing from people who stop by, especially if you're sharing feedback or asking questions about a recipe I've posted here.

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